


Wonderland

by rabidchild67



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Photography, Schmoop, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/pseuds/rabidchild67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach hates being outdoors, but he’ll do it for his BF. And snuggles. Fill for this prompt: <i>snow in Yosemite, photography, peace</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ATONAU](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ATONAU/gifts).



Zach’s a city boy through and through. 

It’s a persona he’s carefully cultivated, one he’s even proud of. It’s not bullshit, either. He grew up in a city, went to university there, and headed straight to LA and New York right after. He can count on one hand the times he’s been in the countryside when he wasn’t working and have change to execute a perfect Three Stooges eye-gouge. Trips to Peru for spiritual discovery notwithstanding, he largely dislikes being outdoors. Besides, it was summer when he landed in Lima.

Zach fucking hates snow. He also realizes his choice to live in a region of the country where it tends to snow quite a lot makes him look foolish, especially considering he had an actual house in sunny LA. But he likes having seasons, at least in theory, and it’s not as if he’s shoveling any driveways personally. He just hates being wet and cold. And outside. And cold – did he mention that? 

So Chris’s sunny disposition as he’s hiking up a trail like a mountain goat and showing exactly no signs the elevation or the weather is affecting him is totally annoying. 

Fucking asshole.

Zach can barely look at him with his rosy, chapped cheeks and red nose, bright smile and lips shining from a generous application of Burt’s Bees. The fact it all combines to make his eyes _exactly_ the same shade of deep cerulean as the cloudless sky hanging above them is also very irritating.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, babe, look!” he whispers almost reverently as he spots a deer in the distance, picking its way down the center of the mountain stream they’ve been skirting. Or is it an elk? Zach couldn’t give a shit, and the thing’s display of a majestic rack of antlers is just showing off as far as he’s concerned.

Chris reached a gloved hand back to Zach, beckoning him to come forward to get a better look even as he’s crouching down to try to frame the perfect shot of it with his camera. Zach can hear the shutter going as he steps reluctantly forward. His feet are numb with cold, though, so he can’t really feel it when he puts one wrong. He trips and slides, grabbing onto a low-hanging pine branch to steady himself. This sends all of the snow that’s accumulated on the massive limb cascading down on top of him. The noise is enough to startle the deer, who literally high-tails it out of there. 

“Aw, I missed him,” Chris says, but he doesn’t sound even a little bit disappointed. He looks back at Zach. “What happened?”

Zach is literally knee-deep in snow, his head and shoulders covered with it. “I slipped.”

Chris makes a kind of joyful sound that ought to be outlawed, then raises his camera and takes a single shot. With another laugh, he stows it away and ambles forward to help Zach out of the mini drift he’s created with his clumsiness. He pulls Zach’s hat off quickly to whisk the snow off his head, but a few flakes of the stuff fall on his neck below his hairline, making him shudder.

“You cold?” Chris steps in close to replace the hat, pulling it down snugly over Zach’s ears with both hands. He’s close enough Zach can see the grey in the scruffy beard he’s started growing again, and the urge to kiss him, despite Zach’s overall foul mood, is almost too strong to resist.

“Freezing. If I get frostbite, it’s on you, Pine!”

“Aww, my poor darling. Well, we don’t want that to happen – let’s head back to the lodge. There’s a different route I want to take today – it’ll only take an hour.”

_An hour?_ The only thing keeping Zach from whining like a bitch-baby is the fact that there will be hot apple cider at the end of this ordeal.

~*~

“I can no longer feel my face,” Zach complains, even as he is moving his facial muscles around in an exaggerated manner. He stands disconsolately just inside the door to their private cabin, still dressed in his winter gear. 

Chris, who has already shed everything, walks back toward him with a grin. “Aw, let me help.”

Zach sniffs petulantly and lets him remove his hat, gloves, coat, and scarf. He’s cold and feeling self-indulgently whiny. 

“There we go,” Chris says, taking Zach’s face in his hands and squishing his cheeks. “Better?”

“Maybe,” Zach says from between comically-smushed lips. Chris leans in and kisses them before letting go of Zach’s face, then pulls away, laughing. “Want some hot cider?”

“Yes, please.” Chris’s spiked hot cider is a thing of beauty, with brandy and rum and a blend of spices that is apparently a Pine family secret. 

Zach bends over to remove his boots as Chris busies himself in the small kitchen. Since he opted for style over function when shopping for this trip at REI, Zach’s hiking boots are not as weather-proof as he’d have liked. His socks are wet, as are the bottom of his pants legs below the knee. He removes his socks before padding into the bedroom, where his skinny jeans offer up a frustrating amount of resistance before he finally flings them into the corner. Rooting through the dresser drawers, he locates a pair of Chris’s thick ski socks and a pair of his sweats; Zach had not packed for this trip with much comfort or practicality in mind, either. He doesn’t know what he expected a trip to Yosemite National Park to be like, nor what he would do with a pair of cashmere Tom Ford trousers out here, but tromping through snow-blanketed meadows and along icy streams was not it. But Chris had wanted to come for the longest time, and city boy Zach finally relented.

When Zach finally emerges from the bedroom, Chris is still fixing the cider, so he heads for the couch and curls himself up at one end. It’s one of those large, overstuffed ones, and its heavy fabric is a natural insulator. Zach sighs as he hugs his knees and rests his head against the cushion. 

“Oh my God, could you make yourself any smaller,” Chris laughs when he comes through from the kitchen with two steaming mugs. 

Zach reaches for one gratefully. “I guess I’ve caught a chill,” Zach says, breathing in rich, spiced steam before taking a sip. He is still chilly – coming in from outside did little to warm him.

“Well, we can’t have that,” Chris says thoughtfully. He sets his mug of cider down on the coffee table and goes to the fireplace. He has a fire laid in no time, and is coaxing a flame into a fire before Zach’s even finished his cider.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Zach wonders.

Chris shrugs and picks up his mug. “Boy Scouts?”

“Of course you were a Boy Scout.”

“Something wrong with that?” He sounds defensive and it’s not the reaction Zach was after.

“Nothing, it’s just that you’re just so… _capable_ out here, I was wondering where it came from.”

“I have many skills at which I excel,” Chris says, mollified, “including warming up cold boyfriends.”

“Oh ho, is that so?” Zach says. ”That’s a tall claim, and it just so happens that I am a cold boyfriend, so here is your chance to prove it.”

“All right,” Chris says. He sets his mug back down on the coffee table and sits on the other end of the couch. He holds his arms out. “Come here.”

“And do what?”

He straightens his legs out sideways on the couch. “You’re gonna sit in my lap.”

“I think I already saw the After School Special about this…”

“Shut up and get over here.”

Zach inches closer until he’s next to Chris. Chris takes his mug from him and sets it down, then takes a hold of Zach’s hips and hauls him closer. He bends his knees until they’re surrounding Zach and Zach’s ass is resting in the hollow between his thighs. “There – comfy?”

“I want to point out this is not technically your lap.”

“You want to argue semantics now?” He wiggles his hips a little, pressing his crotch against the back of Zach’s ass.

“Not at all.”

“Lean back, that’s it.” Chris encourages him to rest back against his chest, then drapes his arms around Zach. He puts a hand on each of Zach’s wrists and folds both their arms across his torso.

“All righty then, I’m gonna just hold you,” Chris says, his voice low, right next to Zach’s ear. Zach shivers, but it’s not because he’s cold; he feels like he is completely wrapped up inside the other man’s body. It might be the most romantic thing he’s ever experienced. 

They sit that way for long minutes, watching the fire until the setting sun makes the shadows lengthen in the room. The warmth from Chris’s body and the fire gradually thaw Zach out; he sighs gratefully and closes his eyes.

“Feelin’ a little better?” Chris’s voice rumbles in his ear many minutes later. 

Zach starts; he’d nearly dozed off. “Mmm.” 

“Hiking in the snow really takes it out of you, huh?”

“Mmm, so does that hot cider.”

“Thanks for coming out with me. I know it’s not your favorite thing in the world.”

“No, it’s fine – I like it.” He blinks himself more awake and notices something on the coffee table – Chris’s camera. “Did you get a chance to download the pictures yet?”

“Not really.”

“Can you show them to me?”

They separate while Chris retrieves the camera. Zach switches on the lamp beside the couch and they entwine themselves together once more, Chris with his arms around Zach as they flip through the pictures. The shots are truly spectacular, the contrast between the white snow and the dark slash of the stream they’d hiked beside was quite dramatic. About halfway through the series they come upon a few candid shots of Zach. In them, he’s looking up at the sky pensively or walking ahead of Chris. 

“Hey, these are good,” Zach says. Even if he is the one saying it, he loves looking at photographs of himself; call it actorly ego, but he does not apologize for it. 

“Well, it’s my favorite subject.”

“Aww. Mine too.”

Chris laughs. “I know.”

Zach laughs as well. “I should be annoyed with you for agreeing with me.”

“Calls ‘em like I sees ‘em. Hey – you hungry? Thought I’d make us those burgers rather than going to the restaurant up at the lodge tonight.” 

Truth be told, Zach was not looking forward to going out in the cold again, even if it’s the short walk along well-maintained paths up to the resort’s main building, so he readily agrees. “You’re too good to me, Chris, honestly,” Zach says, turning his head to kiss him. 

“You’ll make it up to me later.”

“Will I?”

“Well, we have to make sure you’re thoroughly warmed up. Frost bite is murder on the appendages.” His hand drifts slowly down Zach’s stomach to cover his crotch.

“I don’t think that appendage was in any danger.”

“You can’t blame me for wanting to make sure.”

Of course he couldn’t.


End file.
